


life ain't passing you by

by soulgraves



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-09
Updated: 2013-08-09
Packaged: 2017-12-22 23:06:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/919081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulgraves/pseuds/soulgraves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Old Woman Josie and her angel friends, shopping for cleaning supplies at the dollar store.</p>
            </blockquote>





	life ain't passing you by

**Author's Note:**

> Fill for the [GET DIRTY: ficathon](http://bloodconfetti.livejournal.com).

Two of them are bowed in prayer over the kitty litter. She’s not a cat person herself so she doesn’t know if that’s normal, but they seem content enough so she leaves them be and busies herself with the tough choice of apple or pine scented detergent, squinting as the fluorescent overhead lights flicker coded messages. She doesn’t glance at the freezer aisle because there is no freezer aisle.

When she looks back down at her cart it is full of five pack Jumbo Sponge scouring pads – the colored sort – and multiple copies of what she thinks is _Rock & Roll High School Forever_, though she doesn’t speak Japanese so she can’t be sure. One of the angels is pretending to read the ingredients on a can of chopped tomatoes, and she tuts and makes him put at least three copies of the movie back. DVD players were banned by the City Council last month, so the angel is just being imprudent. She thinks he might be the same one who leaves the toilet seat up. It wouldn’t surprise her.

The store radio is playing the greatest hits of Kenny Loggins, which is really just Footloose on repeat, the disk obviously worn from overplay. She tries to remember if Footloose is always playing at the Dollar Store and finds herself mentally repeating the names of _Goede Tijden, Slechte Tijden_ power couples instead. She does not know what _Goede Tijden, Slechte Tijden_ is, but she is suddenly incredibly invested in Janine Elschot’s love life.

She shoos the youngest angel down from where he’s sitting on the top shelf of the cereal aisle and threatens to withhold dessert when he ignores her. That’s enough to make him move, because dessert tonight is strawberry trifle and there is, it seems, nothing that angels love as much as strawberry trifle. The youngest angel mutters under his breath as he wanders off, grabbing a box of Lucky Charms as if daring her to comment, and she sighs and tells him not to ruin his dinner even though she is not his mother because angels do not have mothers. Warrior messengers of Heaven are not children, of course, but lately she’s resorted to reading Internet articles on _Fifty Cheap Ways to Entertain Your Kids During Summer Vacation_ all the same.

When she’s ready, the angels bag up everything but the drain cleaner and the dish detergent in original blue and walk straight by the young checkout boy and through the glass exit doors. She counts the remaining $1.70 out of her purse in exact change and knows she won’t be stopped for stealing since the angels Do Not Actually Exist. The checkout boy smiles at her politely and doesn’t look towards the parking lot where the angels have started playing hacky-sack with a bag of La Moderna spaghetti, faces sheepish as they accidentally set off a row of car alarms. 

She plans to have them scrub down the kitchen after dinner, and hopefully that will wear them out long enough for her to get her mandatory three hours of sleep, though she has only actually seen them nap once, all piled together on a single couch with their heads bent close and a bright golden glow surrounding them. She’s not even sure that they still exist when she closes her eyes, but that is neither here nor there, so she gathers them up, firmly ignoring the black hole on the other side of the street, and herds them back towards home.


End file.
